Life in a small south Texas town of roughly 19,000 and its environs. The other towns are less than 5,000 people nearby.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

"rights" and "general welfare"

This post kind of goes along with what I was talking in the previous posts, about the rights that everyone takes for granted. "he has a right to make a living" "he has right to own a house" "he has a right to a job" "he has a right to live here" . Let's look at those statements.

Make that even more so for those who get a check from the government. Meddle with that, oh boy, call out the dogs! Reform Social Security? AARP will roust the elderly. Have Medicare reformed? Heaven forbid! Change Medicaid? No way! As long as one's ox isn't gored, everything is peachy keen. Meanwhile, everything else goes to hell in a hand-basket. Charge everything to future generations.

And "tax the rich". I'm despising that phrase, along with "corporations who make too much money". Corporations aren't there to give people money, they are there to make things, and make a profit for their shareholders. People work there for a job. Again, it's a privilege, not a right, to work at a job.

Like healthcare. It's not a right. No one has a right to healthcare. It's a service, that one pays for. Like no one has a right to drive their car wherever they want. It's a privilege.

The Preamble of the Constitution goes:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The Preamble serves solely as an introduction and does not assign powers to the federal government, nor does it provide specific limitations on government action. Due to the Preamble's limited nature, it has almost certainly never been relied upon by any court as the decisive factor in deciding a case,except regarding frivolous litigation.

WelfareWELFARE, n. [well and fare, a good faring; G.]

1. Exemption from misfortune, sickness, calamity or evil; the enjoyment of health and the common blessings of life; prosperity; happiness; applied to persons.

2. Exemption from any unusual evil or calamity; the enjoyment of peace and prosperity, or the ordinary blessings of society and civil government; applied to states.

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constitutents." - James Madison, regarding an appropriations bill for French refugees, 1794

Despite the wishes of some to invoke "original intention" in interpreting the constitution, this author will only dare to the kind of originalism that looks at what the public thought that it meant, who would read this clause or hear about it, at the time it was written. At that time, it was clear that general welfare in this context dealt with the welfare of the Union, and excluded any individual or local welfare.

It wasn’t until the expansionist view of “general welfare” was promoted by the Progressive movement and by FDR. His “New Deal” used this as an power, thus making our country a big welfare nanny state.first, but swung around, and as a result our country gradually became a welfare state.

Hamilton had the expansionist view of the general welfare, and Madison had the view that was meant with the constitution, however, in this day and age, Hamilton has come to rule, and look at what his view has gotten us. Good living to the hungry and the poor. Taking of resources from those who are productive, what you don't see until later is the beast of government that is created in this monstrosity, and the loss of freedom.

When the constitution was written, ‘general welfare’ was the general welfare of the states, and again, all rights not allowed to the Federal Government was RESERVED TO THE STATES (see 10th Amendment). The Federal government has yet again put their own spin on what the constitution says, and changed it, for the worse, and to the detriment of this country.